It is imperative to keep hand guns out of the hands of children and thieves. The art does supply somewhat conventional small safes for locking up hand guns. Most of such safes are small portable safes, which may be easily carried off by thieves. Also they are not easily disguised or proportioned to be hidable to reduce the possible discovery of their location and access thereinto by either a curious child or potential thief.
Some of these safes have combination locks, which in particular are quite unsatisfactory in that the guns cannot be quickly withdrawn because of the time for manipulation and the need for visibility which makes night-time entry difficult. Thus, in the event of danger such as the encountering of a burglar at night, it is difficult to retrieve a hand gun quickly without making noises or turning on lights. Under such times of stress, not only is fast action necessary, but a routine for removal of the hand gun into a ready to use posture is necessary which is not apt to be aborted by the need to access the safe quietly and rapidly, or simply because of nerves in the excitement of the moment that makes a combination inoperable. With the operation of a combination lock necessary, for example, an aborted attempt to open the safe to retrieve a hand gun could end up as a fatality because the combination was not handy or because in the excitement and need for fast action the combination was muffed or the unlocking process was noisy or required turning on a light.
Similar problems are encountered with key operated safes. To find the key in times of stress in the presence of a middle-of-the-night intruder, for example, you cannot turn on a light to search for the key hidden in a drawer which could not be opened without possibility of a tell-tale noise, or a possibility of stumbling over an object trying to get to the key hiding place, thus being apt to make noises in the attempt that would alert a burglar.
It would be desirable therefore to have a hand gun safe that would permit a loaded hand gun to be stored in a position available for immediate use and preferably a safe of a size that could easily be secreted so that it would be hard to locate.
In the case of storing a hand gun in a household with minor children, special precautions must be made to keep that gun secretly stored and if found, still inaccessible to the children because the safe is child-proof enough that it could not be easily opened. Also the ability to hide the safe and its contents from potential theft is important.
Even with these pressing demands for better solutions, no known safes have been introduced which would satisfy the aforesaid safety and access conditions and avoid the problems. Gun safes in the prior art are typically small safes which are made and locked in a conventional way and depend upon keys or combinations for preventing access to a gun. Thus, there is a special need for a satisfactory improved and innovative hand gun safe.
A general objective of this invention is to provide an improved safe for storage of a hand gun.
A more specific objective of this invention is to provide a fast access, childproof safe especially adapted for storing a hand gun. Another objective of the invention is to provide a safe for storage of a hand gun that affords the desired advantages above discussed and solves the prior art problems above set forth.
Other objects, advantages and features of the invention will be found throughout the following description.